Greta stood alone, knife in hand. She felt relief at the solitude the festival had given her. It was usually so noisy in the kitchen, so hot, so full of people plucking fowls and kneading dough, putting things in ovens and pulling them out again. It was like a mouth grinding away, and in the end resulting in nothing but shit.

Greta had adjusted to despair. She’d become expert with a knife after spending years of days breaking down birds, pigs, and cows into parts that would be cooked into various dishes. They were long days spent wrist deep in flesh and blood and bone. Time had become like a dream to her, the repetitive motions, the sounds, the smells. So much of the world was meat, wrapped in skin, bound by sinew. All it took to unknit everything living was a blade.

She didn’t like to look at people anymore, because she couldn’t help seeing them as their parts. Dark meat and light. Skin and fat to slice away. Soft organs, safe for now in the darkness. She assumed people could tell she was thinking this about them, which was why they stared. She couldn’t help it, though. You become what you do repeatedly. She was a blade, an unmaker.

Greta liked to sing as she worked, softly, to the music of the forest she could still hear. Was it inside her head, or did everyone hear it? She had no one to ask. She couldn’t even ask Hans, who had become something of a valet to the prince. He was valued, which meant he was safe. There was nothing more she wanted for her brother, even as it hurt her feelings that he never spoke a word to her.

She also knew why the prince liked to watch her in the kitchen: She too was meat. He looked at her the same way she looked at the flesh in front of her, as though he was imagining how it could be rendered and transformed into something useful neatly and efficiently.

It was no secret he desired her. He occasionally brought flowers and gifts, such as soft animal skins to keep away the chill at night—the maids’ quarters were drafty in winter. He touched her too sometimes; his unwelcome hand cupping her bottom or the curve of her breast. More than once, he’d pinched her hard. The look on his face horrified her. He liked seeing her in pain.

The first time he made her cry, he gave her a little clockwork device afterward: an egg that cracked open to produce a tiny winged creature. It was strange and hideous and also beautiful at the same time. She’d never owned anything like this, useless and ornate. She supposed it was good to attract the attentions of a prince. But she didn’t want it. She didn’t want that sort of attention from anyone. She never had. She wanted to be amid the trees and their music. That was home. Her only home.

Still, he was the reason she got to see Hans, so she accepted the attention without complaint. It was worth it for her to see that Hans was well, even as he always looked at her with sad eyes. He was well, and he was tall, taller than their father had been. He had very nearly become a man.

Her life had once been different. Their life had been different. But that life felt distant now, like something someone else had lived. She hadn’t known then that it had been as fragile as breath, as impossible to hold as a song.

She stretched the plucked wing of a chicken and brought the knife down on the ridged joint that kept it attached to the bird. Thwack. The limb was free. She lifted the blade, ready to move it to the next joint, when she heard something more clearly than she had in ages.

Music.

It was the woods.

She set down her knife, closed her eyes, and listened. Strange how that helped her hear better, as if releasing the blade and the awful sight of butchered meat left her more open to the effects of the song. Her body ached. But she stood still in spite of her grief, as steady as a tree. Sorrow hadn’t broken her. It meant there was hope. That she did not always have to live this way.

No one was coming to save her and Hans. Life was not going to get better. Not unless she made it so. Her chance was now.

Hans was almost certainly with Albrecht. He was valued. Protected. He’d never go hungry. She had no right to ask her brother to leave that behind. And yet she could not bear the thought of escaping without him.

Willing herself to move, she sneaked into the tower where he and the prince worked. Heart in mouth, she peered into the prince’s chambers. She saw many things so awful they rooted her to the stone floor.

She did not see her brother. He must have gone to the festival after all.

The woods called to her. A strand of music, a high piping harmony no doubt played by Hans’s friend, brought to mind the image of a bird gliding on an updraft. Effortless freedom. When had she last felt that?

She considered going back for her clockwork egg. Imagined the weight of it in her hand.

But it was not a bird. Not the real thing anyway. It was monstrous by comparison.

She didn’t need it. A blade, though, was another story. She returned to the kitchen and dropped one into a sack, along with all the food she could carry.

It made her a thief after all these years. So be it. Maybe the things people said about you had a way of becoming the truth.